The Left is trying to make a martyr of SGT Travis Bishop, the soldier who went AWOL on the day his unit deployed to Afghanistan, returned a week later to begin the processing of his application for conscientious objector. Bishop was sentenced to a year in jail last Friday. TSO’s favorite journalist Dahr Jamail who was there writes;
Despite Sgt. Bishop’s commander, Captain Christopher Hall’s admission to the court that he had never provided CO training to Bishop’s unit, the jury, who were all officers of much higher ranks (six to seven ranks higher) than Bishop, therefore, not necessarily a jury of his peers, appeared hostile to Bishop’s plight.
For example, one of the jurors had to be woken up during the trial. Another, a Lt. Col. Atkins, rolled his eyes and shook his head throughout most of the defense’s time of making their case.
So Jamail is trying to push the theory that Bishop’s trial was unconstitutional (because the jury wasn’t a panel of peers – check the court martial regs, Jamail), instead of admitting that James Branum, Bishop’s lawyer is an incompetent boob;
“The war in Afghanistan does not meet the criteria for lawful war under the UN Charter, which says that member nations who joined the UN, as did the US, should give up war forever, aside from two exceptions: that the war is in self defense, and that the use of force was authorized by the UN Security Council,” Branum told Truthout in an earlier interview, “The nation of Afghanistan did not attack the United States. The Taliban may have, but the nation and people of Afghanistan did not. And under US law, the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, any treaty enacted by the US is now the ’supreme law of the land.’ So when the United States signed the UN Charter, we made that our law as well.”
Yeah, the Taliban attacked the US not the Afghan people – however, the Taliban was the government of Afghanistan at the time of the attack, weren’t they? Is Branum trying to say that the US is attacking the current government of Afghanistan – truly a freakin’ moron.
Branum told Truthout he is attempting to establish a precedent with the trial, regardless of the outcome. “We want to change the law, and I would argue that when soldiers are informed of their deployment, which is generally two to six months in advance, they should be giving training about CO status. I will argue that if you don’t do the training, you can’t deploy.”
Branum’s argument that Travis didn’t have time to file his application for CO status is boobery, best illustrated by Branum’s other client, Victor Agosto, who was in Bishop’s unit and had plenty of time to inform his unit he was not going to deploy with his unit to Afghanistan. Agosto got thirty days in jail because he didn’t go AWOL on the day his unit deployed, unlike Bishop who was awarded a year in jail at my expense.
At the link above, there’s also a letter from Bishop who continues the stupid defense his lawyer tried – that he’s ignorant, so he shouldn’t be in jail;
All I can say is this: If I had a Soldier that acted on impulse and did something illegal that I, his Sergeant, could have trained him on, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be in the First Sergeant’s office the next morning explaining how I ‘failed’ the Soldier, leaving this Soldier untrained and, ultimately, unprepared.
Yeah, dumbass, except that you hung out with Victor Agosto for months before your unit deployed and you didn’t learn anything from him? Your lawyer is a stupid moron and you’re paying the price for listening to him. Have a nice year, cupcake.
Our friend, Tankerbabe, got a quote from a member of the jury that illustrates just how stupid Branum is and how badly he screwed Bishop with his bass-akward representation, but I’m waiting on his permission to use his quote, I’ll have to report on that later.
